Kiley McInroy

CO-LIVING INTO THE FUTURE

As civilization evolves into the 21st Century, we can expect major changes in how people will be living.

With rent on the rise, job creation down and automation looming to further impact jobs, it is likely more and more people, millennials in particular, who will not be able to raise a family in the city they love, any longer.

Neal Gorenflo, founder of the online magazine Shareable, says, “For one thing, millennials are entering a family building stage, and there are no easy answers for them. The suburbs remain unappealing and it may be too expensive for them to raise families in the cities they seem to love most. I see a big housing bind coming for them and also new community housing models emerging — including tiny house villages, coliving, agrihoods, cohousing, and urban villages — to fill the gap.”

Neal goes on to say, “Another trend is that boomers are figuring out how to house themselves with dignity for their last years. Senior cohousing is the fastest growing sector of the cohousing movement. In the last decade, hundreds of senior villages, which are mutual aid networks grounded in existing geographic communities, have formed to help seniors age in place. Boomers and their millennial offspring, the two biggest demographics, are struggling with housing, but for different reasons stemming from their different life stages.”

One possible opportunity is some kind of streamlined cohousing targeted to young families. And secondary or tertiary cities developing in a way to attract families. It’s so weird, and telling, that our biggest communities, cities, are often difficult places for families and elders to live.

Still, there’s much work to do to bring communal style of living to the masses. But these conditions are likely leading to create tremendous entrepreneurial opportunities in the future, and open up possibilities that we’ve hardly even dreamed of yet.